As anticipated, the Fukuda cabinet has decided to extend the extraordinary (and extraordinarily long) Diet session thirty-one days, to 15 January, ensuring that the sixty-day rule will take effect and allow the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror special measures law.As noted by MTC, the extension means that the Diet will recess for …
Author: Tobias S. Harris
Tobias Harris is Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A dangerous word
AEI's Michael Auslin, weighing in on the feud over China's denying US Navy ships access to Hong Kong at Contentions, argues that US credibility has suffered from a failure to respond to China's behavior other than by sending the USS Kitty Hawk back to Japan via the Taiwan Straits.He says, "A number of my Asia-wonk …
Fukudome to the Chicago Cubs
http://youtube.com/v/3oCkgFRJFe8I don't have any analysis to add here. I'm just happy that my Cubs have finally nabbed a top-flight Japanese free agent.
Waning support for the anti-terror law
A survey conducted by Yomiuri over the weekend asked whether it is "appropriate" for the government to use its two-thirds majority to pass the new anti-terror special measures bill over an Upper House rejection of the bill.Consistent with other recent polls, the results were decidedly tepid. 43% favored playing the supermajority card, 44% opposed. Meanwhile, …
Discontent in the air
There is no shortage of discontent in Japanese politics today.The HANA right (that's Hiranuma-Abe-Nakagawa-Aso), including their sympathizers in the media, are finding their voice again, and as always, it's a belligerent, combative voice — as described by MTC in this post about the contents of Voice's latest issue. The November issue too was full of …
The post-Koizumi LDP and the search for a new Japanese model
Yamaguchi Jiro, a specialist in Japanese and British politics at Hokkaido University, had an article in the November Ronza that has been published in translation at Japan Focus.Yamaguchi competently explains the reasons for Mr. Abe's demise, and in the final portions of the essay, places Mr. Abe's decline and fall squarely in the larger narrative …
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On Ozawa’s statecraft
Over at 空, Ken Tanaka wonders about my criticism of Mr. Ozawa's remarks in China in this post, echoing the questions of several commentators to the same post.Let me be clear: Japan has no choice but to have cordial and constructive relations with China, the same as for the United States, Australia, India, and other …
Ozawa glorifies the Sino-Japanese relationship
I was way off target in my hopes that Mr. Ozawa would be reasonable on his trip to China."The intensely cold period in Sino-Japanese relations has been surmounted, and the warm period has advanced," he said. "Both of our countries must bear a great responsibility politically, economically, and even for the global environment, and there …
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Fukuda answers some questions
After weeks of uncertainty, Prime Minister Fukuda has moved to answer definitively the six unanswered questions of the current Diet session, answering at least two of them by announcing that he will use the government's supermajority in the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror law, and he will extend the Diet session into …
The right is alive, if not kicking (yet)
As planned, onetime Abe wingman Nakagawa Shoichi has formed a conservative study group within the LDP that will keep the flame of the Abe revolution burning.At the opening meeting, Mr. Nakagawa said, "The things which everyone said 'we must do' until a few months ago must not be forgotten." By which he means those things …
Tobias S. Harris 